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Thursday, April 24, 2014

On the week we broke the internet (and got a new water tower design in the process)...

Two weeks ago, my husband and I broke the internet.

Well, not really.
What we did do was try to make positive changes in our community via the
internet.

Two weeks ago, I noticed the city council’s pick of a design
for a new water tower. I jokingly asked
my husband to make a new design – because he is hilarious and I knew he could
do a better design in less than five minutes.
He posted his new design on Facebook.
By noon that day we started a Facebook group claiming the water tower
design was lame. Then we asked people to
submit new water tower designs, and asked people to vote on the design they
liked the best.

Mlive (a local news source) did a few stories on our group (thanks again Mlive –
especially you Will!).

The city council held a special meeting –where one of the
topics was picking a new water tower design.

Last night – the city council picked a new design based off
of submissions from our Facebook group.

The designs people submitted were beautiful. I feel so incredibly proud of Jackson, and so
incredibly proud of the level of creativity that runs throughout our city. I am also incredibly thankful that the city
council was receptive to reconsidering a new design. Overall, I am just thankful and grateful.

I also learned a huge lesson about the internet: people on
the internet can be jerks. I go online
and read three newspapers a day, and I peruse the comments section. I always knew that there were a select group
of people that were incredibly cruel. It
is one thing to read the cruelty when it is directed toward an op-ed piece on a
news site. It is entirely different to
have people rip apart and denigrate the creative work of others for no apparent
reason other than to be a jerkface.

When my husband and I created the group we had two rules: we
would be positive about Jackson and we would never be mean to people that
posted cruel things. For the last two
weeks, I think my husband and I have had several nose bleeds from taking the high
road.

Foucault’s discourse analysis looks at how power can take
form via language. In other words, the
moment you put something into language – you give it power. By talking about the water tower design, we
gave that power. By talking about the
negative comments via the water tower, I am giving them power. We heard one guy ranting about how dumb our
water tower Facebook group was. I
giggled thinking “We won. You just gave
us power.” Then, I caught myself in my
own ironic trap and thought “Damn, did he just win because I gave his
conversation power by talking about it?”

It is easy to get lost the power of it all. So – let’s not get lost. Moving forward, there are three things my
husband and I want to do with our new found “power”.

First, we want to give power away. The worst bosses are the people that sit atop
of their knowledge and never disperse it.
Those bosses make you feels scared and intimidated. We don’t want to be that type of boss. Through this Facebook group, and through
voting, my husband and I realized we have the ability to help people’s voices
be heard. We want to give more power to
that. We have an entire generation of
people who feel like no one in government cares about what they are
saying. We want to help end that. We have a bunch of residents who love Jackson
and are waiting to see where they can help.
We want to give power to those positive voices. We want our generation to be active and
engaged. We want people to feel like
their views and voices are important. We
want to take the power of people’s voices on the internet, and channel them
into streams where a positive impact can be felt throughout the communities in
which people live.

Second, we are going to die of nose bleeds. By that, I mean we are always going to keep
our integrity. A few days ago my husband
looked at me and said a level of annoyance, “You ALWAYS take the high road.” He is right.
I always do and I always will (well, more like 95% of the time). I would rather die being kind to someone than
live knowing I have the power to tear a man down and make him feel like he is
less than I. There is no love in that
lifestyle. There is no real victory in
that lifestyle. When people are mean to
my husband or me it hurts my heart. My
human reaction is to punch that person (we are all human first). However, because I have the ability to
exercise control, my reaction will never be to punch. My reaction will be to remain kind. That does not mean we will be doormats to
people whose only action is to tear us down.
I will walk away from cruelty and I will remove myself from abuse.

Third, I pray that everything we do is to honor God and help
people feel the love and compassion of Christ.
Over the past two weeks, I have never felt so torn down in my entire life. Fortunately, every time someone said
something mean – we had 10 people on our side lifting us up. We had friends writing to us sending us words
of love and kindness. We had strangers
defending us. Despite feeling torn down,
I do not know if I have ever felt so much love.
More than that, my husband and I had some amazing reactions with
complete strangers. One person wrote
saying that he was disappointed that he missed the deadline to vote and that he
had tough personal day. My husband wrote
back and sent the stranger kind words.
My husband and this stranger then proceeded to have an amazing
conversation. God’s grace came through
in that moment. Wherever we meet anger
with kindness, we find God. Whenever we
meet dissent with compassion, we find God.
Whenever we find God in any of these moments, we honor Him in what we
do. I pray that we continue to do that.